Using e-mail marketing to reach your audience
It’s easy to overlook e-mail marketing in terms of effectiveness as it seems we all receive so many marketing emails every day. However, an Econsultancy report from March 09 found that 78% of the 1000 respondents rated email as being excellent or good for return on investment (ROI).
A lot of people we meet also believe email marketing can be more hassle than it’s worth but we’d like to tell you different.
Why email marketing is worth it
It’s cheap
Creating a campaign is cheap and easy. You can do it yourself or employ a designer to brand it up for you, either way it is relatively cheap because it is not too time consuming.
It’s measurable
Depending on the software you choose to send the email with you should be able to measure how many people have read it, clicked a link and forwarded it on etc.
You could send out emails in batches using a few different designs to test layouts etc. using your Google Analytics data before your final push of emails. This will let you test what works before potentially sending out an inefective campaign to your entire database.
It spreads
With any luck your email can be forwarded on with just a click of a button and with a little more luck, it will be forwareded on again-and-again. You can reach far more people than you thought possible.
If it’s an eye-catching email with a good offer in it the best case is that will will go viral (i.e be sent on and on to more and more receipients). People do not have much time to devote to reading text so with spot-on graphics and the message shouting out of the email you are putting your message infront of the reader as quickly as possible.
It’s impulsive
Email marketing can encourage impulse buys if the offers are engaging enough. It can also remind the receipient that your company exists and with any luck – catch them at the right time they were looking for a product you carry!
Consider putting in an offer that really makes it worth while to visit your site: money off, free delivery or maybe eevn a free gift on all new orders? An e-dialogue survey found that 42% of their respondents would be encouraged to make an impulse online purchase when tempted with a time limited offer.
It’s personal
Depending on the data you gather at registration, you may be able to personalise e-mail with names, birthdays etc and you could even send out targeted e-mails based on past purchase history (as Amazon do, for example).